June 10, 2025 · Episode 24
43 Min, 24 Sec 

Summary

This episode picks up where the last one left off—still circling the question of authenticity in art and whether it can be faked without losing something essential. Lyndon and Breallyn dig into the blurred space between persona and performance, touching on Dylan, Bowie, and the ways artists shape their stories to be heard—and what it costs them to do it.

Love this conversation? Get exclusive podcast episodes on our Patreon and support the show!

Transcript

Lyndon: It’s cold today, and I haven’t got any snacks or goodies. I don’t think I’ve thought this through.

Breallyn: We had a lovely business lunch yesterday in the city. Lyndon, did you enjoy that?

Lyndon: Sort of.

Breallyn: What did you enjoy and what didn’t you?

The Unfortunate Cafe Experience

Lyndon: I enjoyed the stroll to find somewhere to eat. And then after having earlier that morning, passed seven or eight cafes to get to the one that I suggested might be good. According to Google, 200 and something reviews, four and a half stars in an alleyway. Everything seemed pretty good. And then when we got there, they had no almond milk, which is what we generally drink.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I find normal milk a bit sour, like when you’ve had almond milk for a couple of weeks and then you try cow’s milk in coffee. It’s weird. But I have it on my cereal. Have cow’s milk on my porridge. Yeah, I’ll have a Milo with cow’s milk.

Breallyn: And yet your latte must…

Lyndon: Yeah, something happened, something weird went on a couple of years ago. Anyway, but that was weird.

Breallyn: Yeah, that was weird. To find if, if you’re trying to find a cafe in Melbourne that… It is, yes, we’ve got oat milk, we’ve got soy milk, we’ve got normal milk, we’ve got skinny milk. We don’t serve almond milk. It wasn’t just that they were out of almond milk, they don’t have, they don’t serve it.

Lyndon: They’ve banned it.

Breallyn: Like, how could you find a place like that?

Lyndon: You know what else is funny too? If you say, okay, we want to go to a cafe, and someone goes, “Oh, would you like normal seating in that cafe? Or would you prefer to sit in the kitchen?” And, you’d go, “What?” No, maybe I’d just prefer to sit at a table where I can talk and not worry about a chef’s backside rubbing mine. That, that would probably be fair enough. But yeah. This cafe, you sat in the kitchen?

Breallyn: Yeah. To be fair, it was about two meters wide in total.

Lyndon: The building?

Breallyn: And yeah, the building. So it was very narrow. The kitchen was a long one wall and then there was just one big long table for all the customers to sit.

Lyndon: I didn’t mind it ’cause it felt like a unique experience.

Breallyn: It was. It was quite a nice little cafe and the waitress was lovely.

Lyndon: She called me darling, so I give her extra points for that.

Breallyn: She was great, but no almond milk. Usually we would walk and just go find somewhere else if they weren’t gonna actually serve the coffee that we wanted. But because we’d had to like shuffle literally past every other guest and sit at the end of this table in the kitchen right next to the washing up, it just felt weird to go, “No, we’ll just leave. Thanks.” When they said we don’t serve almond milk, so it was a bit odd.

Lyndon: I think too, we were, it was raining and we were a bit cold and so once we sat down and we’d already said, “Oh, this will be a chance to warm up.”

Breallyn: Yeah, as you said, we’d walked past, I know at least 10 other, cafes in the block to get there, and we just didn’t, I don’t know.

Lyndon: We probably walked at least half a kilometer, I reckon, from the train station. Yeah. We did pass a lot of cafes. We passed one of, probably the second one that we passed. I looked into it, and this was after rush hour too, so all the cafes were empty, were like everyone was at work.

Breallyn: We were in the legal district of Melbourne.

Lyndon: We’re gonna get, as you said, a lawyer’s coffee.

Breallyn: Yeah. Most of the people working nearby.

Lyndon: The second cafe we passed, I had a look in as we walked past, and I could see they had almond milk. They had the, Milk Lab, almond milk, which, it was, which is our milk of choice. Oh my gosh. Our brand of choice. And I thought, nah, I know nothing about this one. Mind you, the one we ended up at, I knew nothing about, apart from the Google reviews and the fact that it was just around the corner from where we needed to be. So I thought it was convenient in that regard.

But yeah, so after that faux pas, I did say to you, “You can make all the decisions for the rest of the day.” Because I majorly stuffed up.

Breallyn: Yep.

The Double Ristretto Disaster

Lyndon: The thing that made me make such an outlandish statement after sitting in the kitchen and being told they don’t serve almond milk, I then decided to ask for a double ristretto.

Breallyn: Oh, you just messed up so bad. A double ristretto.

Lyndon: Latte, which I’ve had.

Breallyn: You’ve gotta explain that.

Lyndon: Almost zero success in getting in Melbourne, which is unbelievable.

Breallyn: Quick explanation of a double ristretto.

Lyndon: Ristretto means restricted shot. So if you order a ristretto, you are getting basically an espresso shot that is cut off early. So rather than it extracting for the full roughly 25, 30 ml, you’re cutting it off early. You are getting the first half of the pour, and in that first half is where more of the intensity and sweetness comes from, but more importantly, the back end of the pour that you’re missing out on, that’s where more of the bitter flavors come in to balance out the coffee.

Now, I asked for a double ristretto, which basically is two of those restricted shots, so you end up with the same amount of coffee as a normal espresso. The flavor profile is just different. Now, most baristas, I would think would know this, yet probably 90% of the time that I’ve asked for a double ristretto, I’ve been given a double shot. Which is instead of getting 30 ml coffee, now I’m getting 60 ml.

So 60 ml coffee. In a small coffee, whether it’s a latte or a cappuccino, it doesn’t really matter. You’re still getting twice as much actual coffee in that drink as you would normally want, which completely changes the strength of the coffee and the enjoyment of it ’cause it’s just too strong.

So there’s the explanation. So I majorly stuffed up, and why did I majorly stuff up? Because I knew asking for that is fraught with danger. And then to be seated in a cafe that doesn’t serve almond milk. And I thought this would be a great time to test the bar. It shouldn’t even be a test for a bar. It should just be, I just thought it would be part of someone’s toolkit. It wasn’t.

Your coffee was pretty good, even though it was oat milk. I had a bit of a taste of that. Mine was exactly what you’d expect if you’d asked for a double shot oat latte. So that’s why I said you can make the rest of the decisions today.

Breallyn: Yep. Which I did. And we had, that was alright. Yeah. We had lunch. If you are wondering why we’re sitting here talking about coffees, we drank yesterday.

Lyndon: We live in Melbourne.

Breallyn: We’re Melburnians. This is what we do. We just talk about coffee all the time.

Lyndon: And it was established on a previous episode that I used to be what’s commonly known as a coffee snob. And everyone should be actually be proud of me yesterday because I stayed in the cafe. I drank my double shot oat latte like a champion and got on with my day.

Breallyn: Clearly it hasn’t affected you at all.

Lyndon: Have I had a coffee today? Oh, I have. Oh, thank goodness. I can relax.

Breallyn: There you go. Didn’t make as big an impression as yesterday’s coffee.

Lyndon: No, that’s ’cause it was beautiful as expected.

Breallyn: Now we were in the CBD. On business. And I even kept the receipt from lunch. Oh good. So we can claim it on business, but…

Lyndon: We did just talk about business stuff.

Breallyn: Why were we there? You might have to find out on my podcast, which is called In Search of Home, because there are things to report. We had to haul data into the city. Make sure you catch up on that podcast and I will reveal all.

Lyndon: Oh, this is exciting.

Breallyn: It is. I’m excited to talk about it. Was it an exciting result? Mixed reviews there. Let’s unpack it a little further in the next podcast.

Welcome to Pain In The Arts

Lyndon: Welcome to Pain In The Arts. You are here with me, Lyndon.

Breallyn: And I’m Brea.

Lyndon: We are rugged up and wishing that the heater was on.

Breallyn: We can either have it warm or we can have it quiet here in the studio. We can’t have both. No.

Lyndon: That’s right. Alright. This is the first time we’ve done this, a continuation of an episode. Mainly because we had to have a mental health day last episode, debrief on, on a traumatic event.

Breallyn: Have you stuck it out?

Lyndon: We’re laughing now.

Breallyn: Through our long preamble last week. Good on you, and thank you.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: We’re much quicker into the topic this week.

Lyndon: Yeah. Last week we were talking about authenticity in art, what does it mean to be authentic? Is it important? We touched on a bunch of things that you could probably actually base a whole university course around it. They probably do. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a uni. That’s not true. I did see one for a couple of months. I left the week I got my library card, so that was, that was sad. That’s another story. You had homework, Brea, you were meant to watch, the Bob Dylan movie.

Breallyn: Oh, I forgot about my homework and I haven’t done it.

Lyndon: I looked it up earlier to see whether one of our conscriptions, yeah. Whether our, whether one of our subscriptions actually covers it. And, it does not.

Breallyn: That would’ve been hard to see it then.

Lyndon: Yeah, I actually saw it at the cinema. And it’s called A Complete Unknown. And he called himself, I think, a complete unknown. Yeah. But definitely worth seeing at the cinema if you can, because there’s actually a lot of complete performances, musical performances in the movie, and I felt like clapping after them.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So if you’ve got a…

Breallyn: That’s cool.

Lyndon: So yeah, you can imagine if you’re in a cinema and there’s a whole bunch of people in the cinema, it’s a bit like at times watching a concert.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: So you feel like you are part of the audience watching the concept? I’m not sure if, I imagine that’s what the director was aiming for anyway. Yeah. So I got caught up in a bit. I’m not even a massive Bob Dylan fan. I’m probably just like anyone else that knows his music and is aware of him and…

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So on. Anyway, why are we talking about Bob Dylan today? Today’s episode is Authenticity in Art. Yes. Can you fake it?

Authenticity in Performance Art

Breallyn: Yes. So can you fake it? And I think this is probably where we need to talk about some intersections between performance and authenticity. There’s, an undeniable factor that for performance art particularly, I think all art has an element of performance in it. Even painting and writing and so on, but performance arts. The point of them is to, be performing in that moment for the enjoyment of the audience, whether that’s a live audience or whether they’ll see it at a later date.

So yeah. What’s authentic when you are an actor and you’re playing a different person, or you are a musician and you are being larger than life on stage, every single move is choreographed and everything’s, every moment is prearranged. There’s still so much art in that.

Lyndon: I was thinking, that phrase being larger than life, when you step on stage and you just wanna be yourself, but it doesn’t translate enough. When you get told, “Oh, you need to enunciate more,” or you need to, “Put your arms up in the air,” you’ve really gotta make a big show of it. And when you walk over there, you need to, you need to carry yourself in a certain way so that the message gets across, so sometimes it’s literally, it is the, the craft itself is what allows that authenticity to be. To be translated.

I was just watching, I was watching Bono’s book tour, I think the book’s called Songs of Surrender. It’s an audiobook as well. And it was recommended to me at least a year ago by James, a guy we go camping with, so now there’s a stage production, I guess, and it’s Bono talking about the book, it’s like a Broadway show. Bono’s on stage, very minimal props. There’s like a table and four chairs.

There’s a harpist who also sings and she plays a couple of instruments. There’s a cellist and there’s, oh, I’ve forgotten his name. It’s not Jacknife, but there’s a, just a brilliant musician, the musical director, and he’s got all the programming happening and he’s flying in all the different sounds, the, backing tracks where needed. And he’s playing things live, doing a lot of the percussion and so on.

So Bono is telling the story of his life and of U2. Obviously a lot of, it’s lifted from his book, but right. The whole show is so powerful. Yeah. In typical Bono fashion. Yeah. It’s really good.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: I thought it was gonna be a little bit like saccharin, like just, I love Bono. I just thought it was gonna be, it’s just gonna be too much, it’s gonna be too earnest. I’m really gonna have to commit to watching it. And I found it was the opposite because it’s clearly been produced. It’s been directed, it’s had a lot of thought put into it. Even the editing of it for film has been considered. So like you’re not just seeing basically a three camera shot of Bono giving his, in inverted book tour.

Lyndon: You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it’s an actual production intended for film, you wouldn’t call it a concert, but it just has all those elements in it. And so my point is, yeah, the authenticity isn’t ruined at all. In fact, it, the heart of Bono and the heart and the message of the book comes through loud and clear with a respect to the medium that he’s embodying at that time.

So once again, I was just sitting there going, he has done it again. He knows no other way. Yeah. He is a brilliant communicator. And, I thought, I can’t believe he wasn’t the first person I thought of last week in terms of authenticity. Oh yeah.

Wow. There’s so many, isn’t there? And I think I did mention, I don’t know, but this actually made it to the episode, but I might’ve mentioned Midnight Oil for similar reasons where you just do not, you don’t for a minute. I certainly don’t think that Midnight Oil aren’t who they are off stage.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: As to what they present on stage. But yeah, so anyway, I, believe this is called Songs of Surrender. Yeah, really good. Yeah, it…

Breallyn: Sounds so compelling, and as you say, how typically Bono that he would do it in a different way. Like that blurring of genres almost of, or practically creating something different. A book that’s now some kind of performance and, not just a, speaking performance, but a musical performance in a Broadway sensibility like that. Yeah. That is not usual.

Lyndon: No. It’s all shot in black and white too. He’s doing versions of U2 songs with clearly not a rock band behind him.

Breallyn: Yeah. Like for are, but they’re one of the biggest rock bands in the world, and he’s chosen what a harp and a cello, did you say?

Lyndon: Yeah. But there are tracks behind some of the songs, but not in a, corny, awful karaoke backing track kind of way at all. So when he’s doing some of these songs reinterpreted, sometimes different lyrics, even there’s still. Power, and he, just draws people in.

Breallyn: An extremely good communicator, as you said, like, yeah. When all of those skills serve the purpose of communicating something, heart to an audience. Yeah. It can be extremely powerful.

Bob Dylan’s Fabricated Past

Lyndon: I’m gonna go back to Bob Dylan because I need to explain why Bob Dylan.

Breallyn: I just feel like I should go watch the movie now and, come back with my homework. Done.

Lyndon: No, it doesn’t matter. But the reason I did a bit of teaser by saying, we’ll talk about Bob Dylan today especially under this banner of “Can you Fake It?”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is because in his early years, I guess he fabricated his upbringing.

Breallyn: Okay.

Lyndon: That’s what made me think of Bob Dylan. So he’s a paradox of authenticity and invention. I think now, obviously so many years have passed and he hasn’t gone away and. No one’s calling him a fake. And the, more I looked into it, I thought, you know what? Yeah. He fabricated to an extent, his upbringing so that he could fit in, I guess with the folk scene at the time. But that was it really.

Okay. He changed his name, so he portrayed himself as a troubled youth that ran away from home. When he actually had a very comfortable middle class upbringing.

Breallyn: It’s just not very rock and roll, is it? Yeah.

Lyndon: But he was a huge fan of Woody Guthrie, so his actual name’s Robert Zimmerman. So his backstory was that he was a, wandering hobo troubadour from the American Dust Bowl, something like that.

Breallyn: I mean that, it just seems like that…

Lyndon: He had a normal childhood.

Breallyn: That’s pretty common. Is it? Is it not like among big performers that, yeah, you can’t really come out and go, “Yeah, no, I’ve got nothing to complain about, but here’s all my angsty songs.” Like you, it has to be some sort of origin story, I remember reading something by Gene Simmons saying that early on in his career, he had a journalist come over and he, he’d gone out of his way to put on all the face paint. This is Gene Simmons from KISS. If you don’t know this band, they just, they’re the black and white face painters from the…

Lyndon: Seventies and eighties.

Breallyn: Seventies, yeah. So yeah, and a journalist was coming to his house to interview him for a magazine and he was trying to put on the whole, “We’re the spawn of Satan” type. Persona. And then his mom walked in with like enough food for an army and said, “Righto boys, it’s time for you both to eat something.” “You’re looking a bit picky there.” And, just made a mock, just a mock of the, whole situation. And yeah, so…

Lyndon: I’m surprised she just get out a handkerchief and lick the corner of it and wipe something off of his…

Breallyn: Wipe off all that nasty face paint. Something.

Lyndon: A crumb from the corner of his mouth. Dylan was, yeah, he was deeply influenced by folk music and in particular Woody Guthrie. So that led to his adoption of the folk singer persona. But he really wanted to, he wanted to meet Woody Guthrie and he wanted to be playing in the coffee houses where the folk music scene was. I said coffee houses. You did? I think it’s coffee houses.

Breallyn: Is coffee on your mind?

Lyndon: Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t coffee house. Just as I said it, I thought, was it really coffee houses or was it, dens of iniquity?

Breallyn: Do you have to walk in and say, “Can I have a double ristretto almond latte, please?”

Lyndon: That’s right. If you got that wrong, they’d know the jig was up.

Breallyn: That’s it. He’s just a, middle class Jewish boy.

Lyndon: Get out, Zimmerman. So even though he lied about his past, and I think, it’s a forgivable kinda lie in this instance. Yeah. His songs were viscerally true. Yeah. So he was transmitting perhaps something more essential than facts.

Breallyn: Yeah. And that, quality, I was actually talking with our son about this the other day, his point was that he’s surprised when he listens to a lot of bands and he’s doing a lot of listening to, the last 30 years back catalog of different styles of music and so on. We’re talking about Nirvana actually. And he was saying he can’t believe that some of the most popular songs from bands, quite often, they’re not the best written songs or the, have the best idea or even, sound the best in his opinion. And he’s saying, “Why? What is that?”

And sometimes it is just something about a sound or about a certain lyric or an idea in a song that just captures the imagination at the time or captures something that people relate to and go, “I, wish I could have said that in that way,” or “That says what I feel in a certain way.” So I think Bob Dylan was a master at, that kind of thing as well, wasn’t he? Just that whole folk scene and the seventies, was it like the flower power era where…

Lyndon: The sixties.

Breallyn: The sixties? Yeah. So he was able to capture something about the culture at the time that spoke to a lot of people.

Lyndon: Yeah. There was a counterculture happening too, he was definitely a big part of that. He does expose the problem with how we define authenticity. Because sometimes, creating that persona is the most honest an artist can do. ‘Cause it’s the only way they can see to tell the truth on their own terms. Yeah. So that makes me think of another artist, now we are getting into the seventies. And who might that be do you think? I’m gonna say. He’s no longer alive, he’s a chameleon. British. There’s more than one, but this one is a big one.

The Power of Persona: David Bowie

Breallyn: I can’t think of who you might be saying, ’cause I’ve got an artist in mind that I want talk about. In regard to this topic, but might be, yeah. Yeah. So I…

Lyndon: Who is it?

Breallyn: Why don’t we go with your artist first. Tell me who it is and we’ll talk about that, and then I’ll see if I’ve got anything to add when I’m thinking about this particular example.

Lyndon: Okay. So my artist in mind is David Bowie.

Breallyn: I love David Bowie so much.

Lyndon: Do you?

Breallyn: Yeah. I wasn’t thinking about him, but yeah. Yeah. What an example of somebody who’s revolutionary in different ways and an extremely amazing musician in so many ways. Yeah, no, so go ahead, talk about him.

Lyndon: The reason I’m talking about David Bowie is, when we think about, can you fake authenticity. Is it, something that you do in an effort to be taken seriously or in an effort to be heard. I wasn’t really thinking about personas, so I was trying to think of, the journey someone who is just wanting to find their truth and then convey that truth, whatever that is.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And my gut is there’s no shortcut. It’s just a matter of working that out for yourself. And maybe along the way, especially in the early years, you are trying to be authentic rather than just being authentic. Which sounds, sounds like nearly the same thing, but it’s really not, it’s worlds apart.

Thinking about it beyond that, you then you come across artists that you wouldn’t ever question their authenticity as an artist. And then you go, “Hang on a minute, David Bowie created a whole character called Ziggy Stardust.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So does that mean that all the music surrounding that is inauthentic? So that’s why he came to mind. We were just talking about, Dylan wanting to fit in with that folk scene because it spoke to him so much. He loved it so much, and he wanted to be, Woody Guthrie’s biggest disciple. So he was desperate to, break into that scene and to be heard. And he obviously had immense talent. Yeah. And so is creating a persona, is that okay? Like in terms of authenticity? So anyway, that’s, yeah.

Breallyn: I think there’s so many points.

Lyndon: That’s why I brought up David Bowie.

Breallyn: In that as somebody who creates characters a lot and, I’ve done some acting as well, so how to portray characters that other people have created. There’s something about embodying a character or a persona that helps you to cut out some of the noise of all of the complexity of your kind of real self and just focus in on some of those elements that you are desperately trying to portray and that are important for you to convey somehow to other people.

So I feel like that it’s a completely, obviously a very legitimate way of of being an artist and of conveying truth in some regard. I can see why it might’ve been helpful for him to do that. To create Ziggy Stardust and to explore certain elements of his, creative vision in that way. Rather than just being David Bowie. And…

Lyndon: Yeah. And I think too about a comment your mom made the other week when she asked me whether Cat Stevens was still as popular today as he was, in the sixties or the seventies. And I said, “No.” And she was like, “Why is that?” And I said, “Because music is fashion.”

Breallyn: Absolutely. It is. Yeah.

Lyndon: And regardless of whether the message is relevant, authentic or however it’s portrayed, music is still fashion. And so I think about, the generation before David Bowie. And my parents are probably a good example of that. They wouldn’t have taken him seriously.

Breallyn: Yeah, no. Yeah.

Lyndon: Certainly not that character, Ziggy Stardust.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: So nearly would’ve just dismissed him. Yeah. Yet you could get a singer songwriter on an acoustic guitar on stage playing their song, and it’d be perhaps full of cliches and the usual kind of fair. And you’d go, “That wasn’t very authentic, that was, heard it all before.” And, but yet you could, watch a David Bowie performance, a Ziggy Stardust, and it really hit you somewhere deep and somewhere profound and you’d feel an honesty there. Yeah. Way more than perhaps this person that’s sitting on a stool actually looking quite normal and bare, like…

Breallyn: They’re just being themselves.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah. It is interesting. And I think there’s also an element that, none of us create alone in a vacuum. Every performer or every person that seems to be a trailblazer in their particular genre, or they’re, they are doing something different. It’s in, it’s different in relation to what’s gone before and what they’re seeing around them. And they’ve had to find a way to express something which feels authentic for them and feels like they’re doing this thing and, embodying this thing that they’ve got inside them, but they are actually doing it in a juxtaposition of what else is around them.

Is authenticity, just some pure kind of uninfluenced thing. I don’t know that it is. I think that we are all influenced all the time by what’s around and what we’ve heard and what we’re not hearing and, where is a space for something authentic to live. And that’s, that’s where we express that, that thing in an authentic way. But yeah, it is definitely influenced by what’s around.

Lyndon: Yeah. So there’s so many questions around that then, if that is okay, if that’s perfectly fine for someone to have a persona, what is it then that suddenly becomes important? I was saying last week, authenticity maybe isn’t the be all and end all. So the question is, what’s being transmitted beneath the styling? Is it conviction? Is it curiosity? Is it truth wrapped in fiction? And I think last week I might’ve asked if the artist doesn’t believe it or feel it or wrestle with it, why should we?

Breallyn: And yeah, I guess we’re thinking about what art is supposed to do in this context as well, because there’s lots of ways that art is used where it’s maybe even not about wrestling with anything or engaging with something. Sometimes it’s literally escapism entertainment. It’s not about being…

Lyndon: It’s broad.

Breallyn: Yeah. It’s not about changing us always. Yeah. There’s plenty of artistic performances or, there’s plenty of books, films, and so on that. They do just seem to be there for the entertainment and the escapism rather than us wrestle.

Lyndon: Yeah. And I guess what to expect or if we know what we’re in for, then we accept it. What we don’t like is being hoodwinked, and that’s happened time and time again. Milli Vanilli. Yeah. Oh, who was it that, you know when you have a singer miming and they drop the mic?

Breallyn: Yeah, I know. I think that, yeah, when you’re singing a live performance and you find out that it may as well be puppets up there. ‘Cause none of it’s really a live performance that does feel like you’re being cheated. Yeah.

Lyndon: Because we want it to be, we want it to be authentic. We want to believe that something is real. Unless we’re told, “Hey, this isn’t real.” And then we go, “Oh, okay, that’s fine.” It’s…

Breallyn: Very funny. I don’t know, like thing, isn’t it because you, for instance, when you go and see a musical, it’s not real. It’s a made up story. It’s every single moment is…

Lyndon: Hang on. So ‘Cats’ isn’t true.

Breallyn: It’s not true. Every moment is very carefully crafted, rehearsed. It’s been done hundreds of nights before, and yet in that moment of the performance happening, there’s such a rawness and an innocence about it that the cast, the crew, the whole performance of it and the audience are in a moment together that hasn’t happened before and will never happen again. And you’re all there experiencing that at the same time. And I, I don’t know how to. Put words around that, that, that moment of art that’s happening and being experienced and, being felt by everybody involved.

There is something really magical about that. And yet it is all, like everything down to the stitching of the costumes has been so carefully thought out about how it’s gonna affect everything else. So there’s nothing spontaneous about it. There’s no… Yeah. It’s all very careful and, very rehearsed, but it still seems authentic at the time. It’s still the full-hearted performance of everybody there and everybody who’s watching and engaging with it. Yeah. There’s an honesty and, and authenticity about that at that moment.

Lyndon: Because we have expectations going into that. We know what a musical is.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Like how bad is it when you watch a film, you are like, “Oh, this sounds like a good story,” and blah, blah, blah, and then like 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in, they break into a musical number and you’re like, “Oh, hang on a minute.” “This isn’t what I signed up for.” If it takes you by surprise, you’re like, “Oh no, it’s a singing movie.” It really changes the mood, doesn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah. No one wants that sprung on them, I think. No.

Lyndon: But if you know about it, you can go. Okay, alright. So how you go into something, yeah. Based on past experiences. But yeah, I think the whole reason I brought up this idea of authenticity is, from a creator’s perspective, really, is it important when you’re creating, do you need to be thinking about it? That was really the seed of the topic. It is interesting when you start to unravel that and you think about all these artists and you go, “How much of that was necessary for them to be able to tell that story?”

This is something that’s really cool when you see a musician, maybe part of a big band, when they then just sit down and just play their song acoustically, you just immediately have this sense that, oh, this is, it’s like someone from heart bearing their soul. Yeah. It’s probably not always the fact, but you just have that, yeah. Impression or that idea. Yeah. Straight away.

And you go, oh, if it worked, like nearly, I remember a time I was like, if, a song, a pop song didn’t work just with someone sitting at a piano or with a guitar, somehow it was not as meaningful a song. Which is really a, crazy thought, but it’s true. There was that whole MTV made that whole unplugged thing. A phenomenon really.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. To hear those songs rendered differently and…

Lyndon: To hear some bands butcher their songs in an effort to be cool. Jump on that bandwagon. Yeah. Who was the artist you were thinking of?

Freddie Mercury and Paul Kelly: Contrasting Authenticities

Breallyn: I was thinking of Freddie Mercury from Queen, who obviously was an incredible performer and vocalist and I think that’s the thing is when you think of him, it’s a huge performance element there of, being himself, but being the persona of the front man of Queen, and how different that front man is. And you could say this about probably many people, Elton John and, so many big performers who had this enormous presence, an ability to capture a stadium full of people and have them in the palm of their hand.

An ability to, communicate and take a whole room of people’s emotions and put them through their paces, put them through, an experience of the entire, performance ups and downs and quiet moments and, big songs and have everybody right there in that moment for the whole night. That’s an incredible feat. And yet also be a person who is shy and intimidated and has low self-esteem and, has so many also very authentic characteristics, but that those parts of their authenticity, they’re not coming out in the performance. They’re not coming out in the songs even. So much, yeah.

And I would like, from my feeling, what I would say is that it’s completely congruent to have part of your persona be that big, larger than life performance person who, who can relate to everybody and who can lead everybody and who can, bring the action on a night to, be that person and also be all of those other things that, in one personality. I think that it’s okay to have that performance side of things where you’re very confident.

I don’t think that there is actually inauthenticity in that, because I think we’re so complicated as people, we all bring different roles of ourselves to different situations. So I think that’s just more of a, an extreme, example of it when you have those performers that seem absolutely larger than life. Yeah.

Lyndon: That’s right. ‘Cause you could have a performer that’s established themself as as an understated performer who just comes out, plays this song and gets on with it. And that’s what you expect of them. There’s loads, and the first one that I think of is Paul Kelly.

Breallyn: Yeah. Which…

Lyndon: You mentioned last week. So he’s not someone who, he’s larger than life in our… What would you call it?

Breallyn: Like the Australian collective consciousness of, yeah. The collective consciousness is larger than life. Like he embodies, but you…

Lyndon: Don’t expect him to run onto stage saying, “Hello Melbourne,” or anything like that, ripping off his shirt.

Breallyn: And, wearing platform shoes or you just, he’s just, you would…

Lyndon: Expect that he would stroll out and just start playing and, yeah. So you…

Breallyn: Feel that’s an authentic person. You’re not seeing a persona, you’re just seeing a per, a musician, you’re just seeing, yeah.

Lyndon: Whereas if Freddie Mercury came out and just played piano and did it within himself, didn’t have the expressiveness that we ex, we would expect from him. It’s even, I’m just thinking at Live Aid. When he played at the piano in Live Aid, it really was just a guy singing at the piano. Yeah. Playing well, singing great.

But it was Freddie Mercury.

And, he had all the mannerisms of Freddie Mercury. If he didn’t do that and he just sat down and just played the song, the energy would’ve been different. But if Paul Kelly comes out with his very laconic energy and plays a song, that’s no problem. Yeah. That’s, if he steps it up a bit and really gets into it and is working up a sweat, that’s cool as well.

Breallyn: So is it about each performer or musician or whatever, finding their own authentic, per, performance persona?

The Cost of Creation and Final Thoughts

Lyndon: I have a question here. Did it come from somewhere that matters? Maybe that’s a better question. Or maybe that’s what we’re like, no one’s going to see a band or looking at art or listening to a book reading and then afterwards going, “Was that authentic?” Or are they going, “Did that come from somewhere that matters?”

I think it’s just this thing inside of us as humans where we just recognize certain aspects of humanity and, yeah. And the way it’s communicated, so perhaps. Authenticity isn’t a style as such. Yeah. But it’s a cost.

Breallyn: It’s interesting.

Lyndon: Like, when we make something, do we mean it? And I like that idea of has it cost us something?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Because I think that translates.

Breallyn: That is interesting. I feel like anything that I’ve ever done that means something to me. Yeah. I’ve paid the price. It’s cost you in some way. Yeah. Yeah, episode N, See You Later. That idea is a whole other, it just suddenly opens up a whole other world that I’m not qualified to exist in. That’s…

Breallyn: Another topic for another day maybe.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So I think what we’ve concluded is authenticity. It’s a real thing. It’s not something as an artist that you set out necessarily to to try and weave into your work. But that at some point along the way, for your own sake and for an audience’s sake, the work has to matter to you. And, there has to be a truth in it. I was reading, an article written by, Megan Washington this morning where she’s just finished an album and she said once, so it’s just been mastered.

And she said anytime she listens to her mastered album for the first time, she hears it in a new light that she could never have heard it in until that point. And she, she likened it to. A tailor who has been working on a costume or a, dress and has been stitching it and turns it inside out or outside in for the first time, and now can see the whole thing without seeing all the stitching.

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: And all the cutting.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Which I thought was a really good analogy. And that’s what it’s like. I think sometimes you can’t see the cost until it’s done and you can’t appreciate what you’ve done weeks or months or years after you’ve made it. Yeah. And you can only hope that in that time people who are absorbing your work can see not just the beauty or see the, the detail in it, but can feel something as well. And maybe what some of what they’re feeling is what it cost you.

Breallyn: Thank you so much for joining us today on Pain In The Arts. It’s been great to have your company.

Lyndon: Yep. Thank you to everyone listening across the world. We have got listeners in Alaska. Ooh, New Zealand. Australia, obviously. America. Yeah. Alaska’s America. It…

Breallyn: It is.

Lyndon: I think, oh, Spain.

Breallyn: Oh, wow.

Lyndon: The UK.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And Russia and Ukraine.

Breallyn: Oh, wow.

Want more deep dives into the creative process? Our Patreon supporters get exclusive episodes and behind-the-scenes content.